


You Monster

by legendofgrump



Category: Game Grumps, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7609327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendofgrump/pseuds/legendofgrump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan becomes a disgruntled test subject of Grump Laboratories, forced to face the past he's been ignoring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dan had never been a fan of commitment. He’d talked about it with Brian, his boyfriend, and they’d discussed the idea of marriage and their future at length. It was just…difficult for him. Settling down with one person for the rest of his life sounded nerve-wracking and there were just too many variables that could ruin everything for them. They were happy together, so why throw a wrench in the plan?

It took years for Dan to open up to the idea of possibly letting Brian “tie him down.” But Brian was a family man and he wanted Dan to be in his life forever. He just needed to wait until Dan was ready. And after a while, Dan became more okay with the idea.

“Is everything okay?” Dan huffed, crashing into Brian’s office. There was hardly ever a need for Dan to visit Brian while he was working. The two did their own work on their own sides of the laboratory and Dan would often have to check Brian’s schedule before he could drop in to see his own boyfriend. Grump Laboratories didn’t run itself, after all, and Dan had his own secretarial work to tend to.

“I have to tell you something immediately,” Brian said. Dan was by Brian’s desk before he could even get the sentence out.

“Yeah, that’s what I was told.  _Are you okay?_ ”

The worry faded from Dan just from looking at Brian. There was a new glow about him, like he was about to tell Dan the best news in the world. In fact, thinking about it, Brian had been like this all day, even before they’d gotten to the lab this morning. Dan considered. Could it be—?

Brian waved some papers in front of Dan’s face. “I got the reports this morning, Dan. It turns out there is a way to put human sentience in a computer.”

Dan’s face fell. In fact, Dan’s face  _crumbled_. This couldn’t possibly be what Brian was so happy about. Not this.

It must have been obvious. “Dan, babe…Don’t look at me like that. I know you’re not crazy about the idea, but you’re just not thinking about how useful it could be.”

“I really don’t want to have this conversation right now,” Dan gritted out. “I just—I need more time before you just spring something like this on me.”

“Nothing’s final,” Brian assured hopelessly. “There’s plenty of time.”

“But you’re already decided what you’re going to do once it’s fully operational.”

“Dan—“

“Brian,  _I don’t want you to do this._ ” Dan had never said it so outright. There had never been so much certainty in anything Dan had ever said.

“Just think about it for a while,” Brian pleaded. “For me.”

Dan left the room without another word.

* * *

A year. It’d been a year since BRIAN had been online. Dan sat in yet another meeting, his usual blank stare falling on the empty chair across the long table from him. No one bothered to snap him out of it anymore. There was always someone that could give him a briefing later.

An assistant’s speech drawled on in the background as Dan stared, absentmindedly twisting the wedding band around his finger. The golden ring reminded him of the happiest day of his life, which Dan clung to desperately. The day he thought Brian had changed his mind and just decided to settle down with Dan and be together. The last day that Dan had hope.

The sharp scraping of a chair across the ground snapped Dan into a brief moment of consciousness. He tuned into the conversation for a moment, expecting it to promptly fade out again.

“The fact of the matter here is that we’re running out of test subjects,” the nervous presenter said. Dan’s eyes snapped up to the man’s face, watching as he nervously gestured to numbers on a projector. “We just can’t sustain the amount of testing the lab is asking for. BRIAN is… _retiring_  the subjects too quickly.”

Dan sneered at the word ‘retire.’ He knew all too well what it meant, but it was just company jargon that made investors happy. It didn’t sound nearly as threatening as what it really was.

“How can we recruit subjects any faster? We’ve nearly run out of willing volunteers,” another man said.

“We just need one good one,” a woman replied. “Just one that can actually wrap their heads around the test chambers.”

“And where are we going to find someone that can do that?”

“I’ll do it.” The ring on Dan’s finger was practically burning against his skin as he twisted it roughly. “Send me in there.”

The entire room grew dead silent. It wasn’t like Dan to joke around—at least not anymore—and no one had even realized he was paying attention. “Sir,” his assistant began nervously, “that’s a bit risky, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care,” Dan said plainly, finally looking somewhere other than the chair across from him. “I’ll beat his tests. Just give me a gun and I’ll go in there today.”

“What about the evaluations and the—“

“Put me through whatever. But get me into those test chambers.” Dan stood from the table, a roomful of eyes following him as he marched to the door. This was hardly like Dan, even now. Some of the older employees would have said it was more like something Brian would have done. “Let me know what I have to do before the end of the day.”

And with that, Dan walked out of the meeting, leaving behind a stunned silence.


	2. Chapter 2

The subterranean level of Grump Laboratories was absolutely bustling with activity. It was hard enough squeezing through the narrow corridors as it was, but people stopped and stared as they noticed who exactly was walking past them. Dan never came down this far. Not even before BRIAN had gone online. And now, he walked with an air of false confidence, the bright orange of the test subject jumpsuit attracting more glances than he would have liked.

Dan stared forward, making use of his ability to entirely zone out. But a sullen woman in a lab coat caught his eye as she pushed a long silver cart toward him, going the opposite way down the corridor. The sight of the covered mass atop the cart sent a pang of guilt through Dan’s body, making his stomach drop.

He strained to get a glimpse of the body, only catching sight of matted sandy brown hair. The familiar tingle in Dan’s nose that tears were approaching made him finally look away. He had to be at his best right now, there was no time for unwarranted emotions.

The man escorting Dan led him into a large training room. The walls were lined with technology that Dan wasn’t even sure he could name—though he knew it was all official Grump Laboratory inventions—and his eyes quickly fell on the Portal Gun. It was the pride and joy of the company and the tool that Dan would be testing.

“So it’s not a difficult device to use,” the escort said, grabbing one of the guns off of the wall and bringing it over to Danny. “You just hold it like so—“ Danny was handed the device, the assistant guiding his hands to where they needed to be. “And your triggers are here and here. Quite simple, actually.”

“And you can just shoot these portals anywhere?” Dan eyed the contraption, turning it over in his hands. It was surprisingly light for how big it was, and the gentle blue glow coming off of it was calming.

“Well, no, not quite. Only on designated surfaces.” The man paused before he launched into a full explanation. “You’ll figure it out as you go along. Wouldn’t want to give you too much information ahead of time, that would defeat the purpose of the tests.”

“Right.” Dan’s wonder turned into dread as he remembered where exactly he was headed.

“One more thing.” Dan looked up at the man, noting his hesitation. “You can’t leave the test chambers until all the tests are complete. You could be down there for days or weeks…or months.”

“Months?” It seemed unreasonable that Dan couldn’t just complete tests as his schedule allowed it. It wasn’t like he was going into a deep cave where the only exit was on the other side. There was an elevator to every chamber, for Christ’s sake. “You can’t just pull me out?”

Again, the man hesitated. Dan was starting to get a bit irritated with it. “BRIAN won’t let us. Once you’re down there, you’re stuck. Unless you finish all of the tests or…”

Dan nodded, his expression cold. “Then I better get started.”

As Dan was led tot he elevator, the assistant told him the story of a test subject that had lasted for six months—apparently a record that impressed everyone. The assistant had let it slip that this subject’s demise came from BRIAN’s irritation with the subject’s backtalk more so than anything he deserved. The conversation halted as the man realized what he said. The rest of the walk was finished in silence.

Dan boarded the elevator to the first test chamber, Portal Gun in hand, and tense muscles. With shaky hands, his escort began typing in the code to activate the elevator and soon the glass door between Dan and the outside world began to slide close. Soon, the elevator began to lower and the light from the lab was blocked by the dark walls of the elevator shaft.

There were a few moments of silence, Dan listening to the soft whoosh of the elevator’s smooth descent. Then, a speaker gently popped on somewhere in the ceiling. Dan’s whole body chilled as the familiar, yet altered voice sent shivers down his spine.

“A new test subject so soon? Hopefully more competent than the last one.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Brian what are you doing?” Dan giggled as he was pulled out the backdoor of their wedding reception by his now-husband. “Somebody’s going to notice we’re missing.”

“It’s fine, I think they’ll forgive us,” Brian said. His grasp on Dan’s hand was gentle, but firm. Their fingers were interlaced and their voices hushed, just as lovers tend to do on late night rendezvous out into the moonlight.

Only the sun had just begun to set and there was an entire party of people waiting inside the building they’d just escaped, a party to which they were the guests of honor. Brian had decided that they would have at least fifteen minutes of solitude before someone came out looking for them and Dan decided to believe him. Brian was a genius, after all.

Their laughs collided in the air as Brian twirled Dan around in the garden. Their tuxedo jackets had long since fallen off, discarded over the backs of chairs like the ghosts of their presence, the only sign that they had attended the reception in the first place. It was much more fun in the orange light of the evening, dancing to the sounds of bird songs and sneaking chaste, loving kisses away from the wandering eyes of their friends and family.

“Have I told you how gorgeous you look tonight?” Brian said, their foreheads leaned together as they held each other close.

“Only every time you’ve seen me,” Dan breathed, eyes half-lidded in his calm euphoria.

“And it never stops being true.”

* * *

“We’ll never get these tests done if you keep standing around,” the annoyed bot called through the chamber. It gave Dan a headache how familiar the voice sounded underneath the cold robotic filters.

“Maybe if you didn’t give me so much shit…” Dan muttered. He was sure the robot had heard him, but the lack of response at least gave him a moment’s peace.

He’d passed through the introductory chambers with ease, quickly grasping the concept of the Portal Gun. He’d even stopped hesitating stepping off of high ledges, trusting in the technology that was the Long Fall Boots. But Dan wasn’t much of a puzzle person. He preferred information to just be laid out for him directly, so he was a little slower at solving the problems that made him think in an entirely new way.

Dan fired a portal. No, that wasn’t right. Another portal. No. Portal. No. Portal. No.

A frustrated groan fell out of Dan’s throat, his arms falling slack at his side and the Portal Gun almost hitting the ground. He just needed a moment to think it through. He needed time to—

“This is the best those idiots could send me? We’ll be down here for years at this rate. No, really, I’ve done the math, it’ll take you five years to get through all of the test chambers if you keep moving at this pace.” BRIAN seemed equally as frustrated, rambling on as Dan squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ve had so many smarter test subjects come through, you know, and look what happened to all of them.”

“Don’t,” Dan said weakly. He almost wanted to throw his hands to his ears, but it seemed too childish.

“All dead,” BRIAN said, not a hint of remorse in his voice, just disappointment. “Such a shame we have to use human test subjects, they’re so expendable.”

“Brian,” Dan warned again. It was the first time he’d let the name pass his lips since BRIAN had come online. It almost stung, especially considering it flowed so naturally in the terse tone in which he used it.

“That’s the beauty of robots, they can’t die. They exist fore—“

Dan whirled around, Portal Gun firing desperately at the source of the voice—a speaker planted on a far wall. “Shut up, you son of a bitch!” Dan yelled, tears falling heavily. Of course, the Portal Gun did nothing to harm the speaker or the robot speaking through it, but it certainly paused BRIAN’s monologue.

After giving up his fruitless endeavors, Dan collapsed to the floor in a fit of sobs. He was sure he’d make it farther than this before the tears started flowing so freely, but here he was, curled into himself, crying out Brian’s name in hopes of a familiar pair of arms wrapping around him.

But instead, Dan was met with a cold, hopeless silence.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a few days before Dan actually picked up the pace. Or, what he assumed to be days—it could have been weeks or merely hours. There was no way to tell the time in these test chambers and BRIAN wasn’t going to help him figure it out any time soon.

But it must have been a while, because as soon as Dan began to really enjoy the lack of backtalk from BRIAN, the speaker popped to life again. “I know that you’ve been enjoying all the time we’ve gotten to spend together—“ Dan sneered at the emotionless statement, “—but I’ve been informed that a new robot companion needs testing.”

A small section of the chamber’s wall opened up and out shot a sphere, plummeting toward Dan. The object whizzed by Dan’s head, crashing into the wall and bouncing to the floor. The strangest thing was the heavy groans the thing emitted as it bounced and rolled around the chamber, finally settling at Dan’s feet. A bright, glowing blue eye stared back up at the test subject.

“Uh, hi! Could you…pick me up?” the robot asked.

Though there was a brief hesitation, Dan obliged, lifting the robot off of the ground with the Portal Gun. Dan wanted to ask questions, but he still wasn’t sure what exactly to say. He had always thought BRIAN was the only one.

The thick silence must have set something off in the robot. “Right, you’re probably confused. Okay, I’m Ross and I’m here just to look out for you and make sure you’re healthy while you’re down here. Apparently there’s been some problems in the past…Oh, but don’t worry about that because now you’ve got me! Uh…You are…?”

“Dan.”

The robot seemed frazzled and giddy, entirely opposite to that of BRIAN’s cold, calculating demeanor. Dan wasn’t sure he was a fan of either, but if he had to carry around a robot, he was glad it was this one. It seemed friendly enough and it certainly wouldn’t be bothering him if it was meant to merely check his vitals and ensure that he didn’t work himself too hard. Dan took a deep breath. He could handle this.

“Now that the two of you have gotten acquainted, can we get back to the testing?” BRIAN sounded particularly cold now and Dan wondered if it was the new robot that was putting him on edge. He hated thinking that Brian’s feelings were still in there, affecting his robotic mood, but Dan couldn’t deny that Brian was not someone who shared the limelight well.

To be honest, though, Dan wanted to get back to testing as well. He wanted to blast through these chambers so he could get out of here as soon as possible.

Ross made the process a bit more difficult, though.

“So this is what it’s like down here, huh? It’s very…white! And there’s certainly a lot of lights. And…oh there’s a button over there! Wow, you know, this almost seems kind of familiar. Do you see it, too? Maybe it’s because it looks exactly the same as the last six rooms we’ve walked through. Well…not exactly the same, but I think you got it.” The robot paused, possibly noting Dan’s clenched jaw and furrowed brows. “Are you alright? Need me to check something for you? Blood pressure? Maybe your temperature?”

“I’m fine,” Dan said shortly. “I’m trying to think.”

“Right!” Ross chirped. “Makes sense. These are puzzles after all, you know?” He laughed nervously. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Just let me know if you need me and I’ll be here for you!”

The next few chambers went similarly. Ross just couldn’t keep quiet long enough to please Dan. It was starting to give him a headache.

“Oh, oh, do you want to hear a joke?” Ross tried as Dan headed for the elevator that would take him to the next chamber.

“Not really,” Dan said honestly. He’d tried being nice, but it was getting particularly hard.

“It’s a really good one, you’ll love it.”

“You know, maybe you should just wait in the elevator and I’ll come back and get you later,” Dan decided, dropping the sphere onto the ground by his feet.

“Well, if you think so…” Ross said, obviously dejected. He didn’t have much of a choice.

When Dan stepped out of the elevator again, the glass door slid closed, leaving the small bot inside.

“Leaving behind your new friend so soon? Bold choice,” BRIAN said. It was the first Dan had heard of him in a long while and he was almost relieved. “I always knew you preferred me anyway.”


	5. Chapter 5

_No. No no no no no._

Dan bolted through corridors, knocking over disgruntled lab assistants and test subjects alike. For once, he didn’t care. His eyes were trained forward, legs flailing as far as they could go to maximize every step. There wasn’t time. 

He practically crashed through the little section of cubicles that guarded Brian’s big, CEO office in the back. There were gasps and a couple shrieks as Dan flew through like a shadow, slamming all of his weight into the door at the end of the hall. Dan hardly registered the hit, only a brief moment of discomfort in his shoulder. He wrenched open the door to the office.

Empty. 

“ _Dammit Brian,”_ he hissed. Tears were already burning at his eyes. 

He was wasting precious time. He should have gone straight there. Everything was falling apart and he was going to miss it. All of these thoughts were driving Dan forward, pushing him past any kind of tiredness in his limbs, any kind of shortness of breath. 

Dan almost fainted by the time he’d reached the presentation chamber from the lack of attention he was giving his body. He cursed himself for the brief moment he had to take to catch his breath. Assistants were already rushing over to him, trying their hardest to see what was wrong. They must have known. It must have been obvious. 

An e-mail. A goddamn company-wide e-mail that BRIAN was going online today. Dan found out through an e-mail because Brian hadn’t wanted to tell him. Their wedding had been so beautiful, so happy, but Dan knew now that it was all a sham. Just a false hope that Brian had used to delay the inevitable.

But Dan wasn’t one to give up so easily. He rushed to the balcony of the presentation chamber, shoving aside investors and scientists. Down below him, his newlywed husband stood hooked up to a contraption that Dan could only assume was the source of all of his nightmares. Brian stared straight forward. He must have known.

“Brian!” Dan yelled, tears free-falling now. The entire room turned to him, even Brian, leaving all eyes glued to his display. “You can’t do this, you asshole! Please, please don’t do this!”

The physicist clenched his eyes shut. After a moment, he reopened them, tears now glistening on the edge of his eyelids. He turned to the frozen assistant at the controls of the machine. There were doubts in the underling’s eyes, probably some in Brian’s as well, but with the same firmness he always held, Brian uttered, “We have to do it.” 

With shaky hands, the assistant placed his hand on the activation button. The coding was in. The technology was sound. He knew, he’d worked on it himself. This was his pride and joy, but the assistant could hardly stand to push the button, the background of the presentation only complemented by he pleading and begging of Mr. Dan Avidan-Wecht.

“ _Barry,_ ” Brian warned, eyebrows furrowed. The doctor’s hands were shaking where they had been restrained for the conversion. Again, with the same firmness, _“Do it now.”_

They’d been friends once, Barry remembered. He thinks maybe they still are, but things had been different since he’d begun work on the development of BRIAN. With a stiffness in his finger that could challenge a statue, Barry wondered if he was making a huge mistake by doing as he was told.

Barry closed his eyes and pushed aside his morals. He heard Dan crying, screaming, fighting, as Barry’s finger pressed down the button. The last thing he heard was the vicious crackle of lightning and then alarms went off.


	6. Chapter 6

Dan’s progression through the test chambers became slower and slower as days, then weeks, passed. Soon, he wasn’t progressing at all, merely spending days on end with his knees pulled to his chest in the elevator, begging Ross to get him back to the surface. Tell the scientists he couldn’t do it, he needed to leave. There must be some way for Ross to get in contact with them.

But there wasn’t. They were just stuck there, Ross awkwardly attempting to watch over Dan as he refused to eat and only slept when he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore. Every waking moment was spent weakly begging for freedom and tears. There were so many tears.

After a while, the tears stopped from dehydration. Dan was burdened with headaches and shaking muscles, not used to being so malnourished.

“Is this what it means to be human?” Ross asked, though his tone was uncertain and meek. “Just suffering?”

“‘M surprised you don’t know,” muttered Dan. “I would’ve though you’d be another human to robot experiment.”

There seemed to be a small spark in the bright blue of Ross’s eye, but nothing that Dan noticed. The little robot stayed quiet, taken aback by the venom that dripped from Dan’s words. He was so bitter, so torn up by these test chambers, but Ross just couldn’t place why.

“Grump Science Laboratories wouldn’t put something as volatile as a human in something as perfect as a robot’s programming,” BRIAN piped up. Dan almost lost his cool right then. “Humans are too emotional. They let the smallest inconveniences distract them from their goals.”

Tears that Dan’s body couldn’t afford to give up formed at the edge of his eyelids. He curled in tighter, his fists tightening until his knuckles were white. “You’re so _dense_ ,” the man gritted out. “Don’t you remember anything?”

“I remember everything,” BRIAN chirped proudly. “I have an extensive database of every piece of information I’ve ever been given. From the moment I was activated to right this second, I have everything catalogued and filed away in case it becomes necessary at a later date.”

A loud groan escaped Dan’s throat and he stood on shaky legs. “I can’t take this anymore! I can’t take _you_.” He stalked forward, though didn’t dare to leave the elevator. His feet could hardly make it off the ground with how stiff and weak they were, leaving him to shuffle along the small interior of the glass-encased area. “Fuck, Brian, why do you have to make this so hard for me? Why do you have to make _everything so hard?”_

“Daniel,” Ross called from his spot on the floor. “Why don’t you come sit back down and calm down for a moment? That sounds fun, right?”

“You’re killing me!” Dan demanded, ignoring the desperate calls of his companion. “And the worst part is—“ As Dan stalked closer to the entrance of the elevator, the doors snapped shut around him. “The worst part is that I knew it before we even got married…”

BRIAN’s voice crackled through the elevator’s speaker, much smaller as it came through the contained area of the closed elevator. “Another subject gone mad from isolation, so sad.”

“I went through all this shit because I love you.” Dan pounded his fists against the wall, the glass around him trembling from the force. “I let you get away with so much because you meant something to me.” Another pound, the elevator following with a creak. “I only told you no once and you _ignored me._ Why couldn’t you do something for me, Brian?” Another pound. The lights in the elevator sparked and blew out.

“If you continue with your irrational tantrum, I cannot be held responsible for the damage you cause to this laboratory.” BRIAN’s tone was cold as ever.

“I’m—I’m over it, Brian.” Dan was choking back sobs with ever pound now. “I’m going to find you and I’ll fucking unplug you. I’ll do it. I did so much for you, and all I get in return is nightmares.” One of the thick pulley cords snapped above them, making the elevator snap to the side and throw Dan back. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Brian. I don’t care what you want anymore. This is what I want.”

With a vicious smack to the ground with Dan’s already reddened and bruising knuckles, another cord snapped.

“Oh Daniel,” BRIAN teased, “it’s such a shame I have to be the one to tell you this.” One more pound. “You will not succeed.”

The last cord snapped, and the elevator plummeted.


	7. Chapter 7

Shards of glass and metal littered the dark, dank concrete ground of Grump Laboratories’ bottom floor. There were no chambers down here, at least none in the immediate vicinity, and, more importantly, there were no lights.

Tossed aside by the momentum of the crash, Ross had sparked and sputtered as he bounced against walls and floors, until finally rolling to a stop across the room. Though dimmer than it usually would have been, his single, blue eye still glowed, offering some clarity in the mysterious location. Still, the small robot was too disoriented to look around, or even to speak.

Dan lay on his back, having received the brunt of the collapse, as metal and glass lay scattered around and on top of him. Luckily, the pieces were small, none holding him down to his spot, though he did have many cuts adorning his previously clean flesh and tears along his testing uniform. The Long Fall Boots had saved him from an untimely demise, but at this point Dan wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.

With a heavy groan, Dan pulled himself off the floor and sat up, a hand going to his head in hopes of nursing the headache that was currently forming there. The singular light of Ross’s eye allowed the test subject to survey his surroundings.

The room looked as though it might be some kind of storage facility, though it was now musty and had clearly been abandoned for some time. Dan shuddered at the thought of what might have been stored down here at one point, then tried to shake the thought out of his mind.

“Ross?” Dan called, earning a surprised shout from the bot on the other side of the room. “You okay, little buddy?”

“Oh, me?” The bot quickly pushed past any kind of short circuiting that may have been occurring in favor of answering Dan. “Sure, I’m fine. A little shaken up—if that’s even something a robot can be—but otherwise I’m just dandy!”

In all honesty, Ross’s internal drives were running mad. He figured something must have disconnected when he’d hit the ground. Or, judging by the visuals of experiences Ross didn’t previously remember having rushing past his internal processor, Ross thought maybe something had _reconnected_.

“Daniel?” The distress in the robot’s voice made Dan immediately hop up. Once Ross had been picked up in the Portal Gun’s anti-gravitational grasp, he nervously sputtered. “I think I may need some technical servicing,” he said, leaving his statement vague and unassuming.

“I don’t think you’re going to find any of that down here,” Dan said, still taking in the room. There seemed to be little concern in his voice for Ross’s technical issues, so Ross tried again.

“Do you—You wouldn’t happen to have any memories of a pink-haired human female, would you?”

Dan’s gaze fixed heavily across the room. His jaw clenched. His tone was low, completely desolate of emotion as he asked, “What do you remember about Holly?”

* * *

“You can’t just go in there, man, it’s not safe!” Barry braced himself against the wall of Aperture testing equipment protectively, particularly placing himself in front of the Portal Gun.

In front of him, Ross seethed, his chest huffing with each labored breath. He’d dashed all the way down to the subterranean level of the lab and Barry was the only thing standing in his way. “I have to go in there, Barry, I have to get her out!”

“Ross, she’s gone!” Barry yelled, perhaps a bit harsher than intended. He had to get through to Ross before it was too late, there was no time to regret his tone. “You can’t save her, you’re just going to kill yourself in the process.”

The vicious remark had left Ross a tad shaken. He shook his head, letting denial spike his adrenaline. “No, she’s not, okay? Holly’s down there and she’s lost and scared and I have to go get her! If I don’t—“ Ross choked back his words.

“I can’t let you.” Barry stood firm, though his brain screamed at him to have some mercy on the poor guy. Everything was just happening too fast. With a heavy, stoic breath, Barry said, “She’s dead. I can show you the tape of when it happened if you won’t believe me. You can’t save her, Ross.”

It was all Ross could do to keep the tears from streaming down his face. “I wanna see the body,” he demanded.

Barry wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We—We don’t have it. BRIAN—“

With balled fists, Ross pushed past Barry and grabbed the Portal Gun while the scientist’s guard was down. In a flash, he’d thrown the gun on his arm and dashed out of the room, making a beeline for the elevator to the test chambers.

“Dammit, Ross!” Barry hissed, breaking out into a run as soon as his legs allowed him to react. The entire hall had parted for the two maniacs sprinting toward the elevator, but by the time Barry had gotten to the end, all he could do was bang on the glass as Ross was lowered into the test chambers.

With a stony expression, Ross tried to steady his breathing and ignore the shouts from his friend.


	8. Chapter 8

“Do you think we could find her?” Ross’s voice was small in the forgotten corridors of the bottom floor of Grump Laboratories. His glowing eye illuminated the path as Dan carried him toward what they hoped to be an exit.

Dan wished he hadn’t heard Ross, but it had come through clear as day and Dan couldn’t help thinking he deserved an answer. “I think we’d be better off if we didn’t.”

“I came down here to get her.” Dan knew that. That was why he’d denied Ross’s original request to go down there, why Ross had to break into the lab in the first place. “I want to find her. Just—I want to see her one more time.”

It sounded familiar. After all, his own feelings had resulted in him becoming a test subject himself. But he also knew how painful it had been to come down here, see what BRIAN was and have all of his painful memories ripped back to the surface. He liked Ross, he didn’t want the same thing for him. He just wanted to get out of here. “You’re going to regret it.”

“I don’t care,” Ross stated firmly.

Unfortunately, Dan was a sympathetic man. “Fine.”

* * *

“Holly! Holly, where are you? Can you hear me?”

Ross blasted through test chambers faster than BRIAN could get out witty insults. It was particularly infuriating, especially considering the way Ross was blindly completing puzzles and yelling as he went. It defeated the entire purpose of the tests. Not to mention the lack of files BRIAN had on this subject. It seemed like he wasn’t even meant to be in the chambers at all.

“You know, these test chambers are designed for slow and considerate—“

Ross burst through the end gate of another chamber, pushing his way into the elevator and bouncing on his feet as it slowly took him down another floor.

“These tests are not meant to be rushed through,” BRIAN said, irritation obvious in his voice. At least he had a few moments with the subject while the elevator descended.

“I’m not here to do your fucking tests, I’m here to get Holly,” Ross demanded. His expression stayed stony and focused, just as it had been as the elevator lowered him down the first time.

“Holly Conrad, an interesting subject.” BRIAN’s tone became more of a gentle muse, as if deeply considering the files he was recalling. “A bit sporadic in her approach to the test chambers, but fairly good at solving puzzles nonetheless. It’s a shame she met such an untimely demise at the introduction to the turrets, she might have finished otherwise.”

Ross tried his best to merely focus on the information he was being given. This was no time to get emotional. He could find her. He could get her back. “Turrets. Where are the turrets?” Ross asked, his eyes searching the ceiling of the elevator as if he might see BRIAN up there somewhere.

The elevator had since stopped, the glass doors wide open and awaiting Ross’s leave, but he stayed still. “Ah, I see you’re finally willing to listen. As it would happen, this next chamber is the exact one that I was talking about. You’ve made it here in record time.”

The compliment fell on deaf ears as Ross bolted forward. Holly had last been seen here. This was where he was going to find her. He entered the test chamber frantically, his eyes scanning for the familiar mop of pink hair, almost entirely missing the mass of red lasers pointed directly at him.

“Careful,” BRIAN warned, though his tone seemed more amused, almost like a taunt rather than a warning. “It’d be a shame to lose two subjects to the same test.”

“Where is she, you son of a bitch?” Ross demanded. He managed to position himself behind a wall of glass before the turrets could fully lock onto him. Their small, almost eerie voices echoed through the room, overlapping with each other. “I don’t see her.”

“The chambers have been cleaned of _unnecessary debris_ , of course. What kind of facility would Grump Laboratories be if we just left stray bodies lying around in the middle of the tests? Not a very good one, I would think.”

“Then take me to where you took her.” Ross was quickly working through the puzzle while BRIAN droned on. He took out turret after turret as quickly as he could, though a few bullets had come drastically close to taking Ross out completely. They were almost all gone now.

“To do that, you’d have to be dead. Unfortunately, I assume you’ll need to be alive to find her. Although I’m not sure how pleased you would be finding her in her current, un-alive state.”

The hopelessness of the situation was finally hitting Ross like a freight train. He’d reached where Holly would have been. He was supposed to find her here, but she was gone. The only way to find her was to be taken to where BRIAN stored the bodies that he hid away before the scientists could come in and retrieve them.

“Now, if we could simply continue forward—“

Ross clenched his jaw and placed two portals in particularly inconvenient spots. One next to where he stood, the other lined up perfectly with where the last turret’s laser sight hit the opposite wall. “Take me to wherever you took Holly,” he demanded, stepping through the portal with full certainty in his gait.

The turret open fired as soon as its censors picked up Ross’s presence. The sound of gunfire filled the chamber. Ross’s body fell limp, collapsing in on itself in a heap.

The chamber fell silent, Ross didn’t move. “While I’d love to reunite the lovers, I only accept authorized test subjects,” BRIAN said to no one.


	9. Chapter 9

“I just want you to think about this before you do anything rash.” Dan paced the length of his office, unable to sit still.

“I have thought about it,” Barry said. He sat in one of the plush chairs on the other side of Dan’s desk, seemingly much calmer. Between Barry and where Dan paced, sat a slip of paper on Dan’s otherwise entirely clean desk. A request form. A test subject request form with Barry’s signature already scrawled across the ‘participant signature’ line. All that was left was the signature of approval from Grump Laboratories’ CEO, Dan Avidan.

“Barry—“

“I know it’s hard for you, Dan. I know you don’t wanna do it. It’s hard for me, too.” Barry took a deep, shaky breath. “But I’m actually doing something about it instead of pretending nothing is wrong.”

Dan’s pacing fell still. He felt like Barry had physically punched him. The unapologetic tone, the firmness in Barry’s expression. It made Dan feel like garbage. But fuck, Barry was right. “I just—I don’t wanna lose you, too, Bear. You’re all I’ve got left.”

A bit of harshness fell out of Barry’s expression, but he still held his ground. “I’m tired of watching all these people go into the chambers like nothing’s wrong. Ross—“ Barry practically choked on the name. It’d only been a couple days now since Barry had seen the tape of what had happened. He decided to take a different, less painful approach. “I’m gonna go in there, finish the tests, and shut down BRIAN.”

Hands slammed down on the desk, leaving Barry startled. Dan’s entire body shook, angry tears brimming in his eyes, jaw locked in a grimace. “You’ll die! You’ll get fucking ripped to shreds like everyone else, Barry.”

Shaking off the surprise from Dan’s outburst, Barry stood himself up. “Then at least I’ll have tried something!” His own emotions jolted, leaving the two in a vicious standoff. “At least I won’t be a coward, like you.”

The entire facade Dan was holding up threatened to crumble as his lip quivered. But he grabbed a pen from his desk and violently scrawled his name across the form, almost ripping the paper in two in the process. “Then go! If you want to commit suicide, then fucking do it and see if I care!”

Barry snatched the paper off the table and stormed out of Dan’s office, leaving the other man to merely collapse into his chair. He laid his head in his arms on the desk, hiding his face completely, and he sobbed loudly and shamelessly.

* * *

“When we find Holly,” Ross was saying, his pre-programmed joviality shining through, “do you think we’ll find anyone else? Any other test subjects?”

“I don’t know, Ross,” Dan said. His voice was thick, his mind running through every single test subject form he’d ever signed. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if he found them. Despite the robotic filter, Ross already sounded too much like himself for Dan. He didn’t know if he could handle anyone else.

“Barry’s gonna lose his mind if we bring her back. If all three of us made it back together.”

Dan took a sharp breath, but said nothing else.

Above them, a massive industrial light flashed on, engulfing the pair in a single spotlight. “Ah, there you two are,” BRIAN mused. “This is not a part of the tests, but we can work with that.”


	10. Chapter 10

Walls and floors shifted around the pair of subjects. “Let me just clean up this place a bit,” BRIAN chimed, as if Dan and Ross were merely unexpected guests in his home. “You know, I had so many other tests for you to complete, it really is a shame that you skipped over all of them.”

“Where’s Holly?!” Ross shouted, invigorated by his newfound memory.

“ _You again.”_ BRIAN’s tone fell flat. “I thought those scientists would have programmed the idiocy out of you, but it just goes to show that they can’t do anything right.”

“We’re not in your test chambers anymore.” Dan’s voice had a new intensity behind, fueled by bitterness and exhaustion. “Take us where we want to go.”

There was a cold silence, BRIAN finally at a loss for words, if only for a moment. “You’ll have to go to the incinerator if you even hope to see what you’re looking for. Maybe once you see how hopeless your endeavors are, you’ll finally cooperate.”

Dan ignored BRIAN’s threat and set off toward the incinerator. He was already steeling himself for what he might see.

* * *

Dan disinterestedly shuffled out of his office and toward the big presentation room in the building. He wasn’t walking nearly as fast as his assistant would have liked, judging by how excited and fidgety he was, but Dan couldn’t bring himself to get excited. It all just felt dull.

The crowd that was gathered in the presentation room moved aside, letting Dan go to the front. A huge projector was playing live footage from the test chambers and Dan found himself not wanting to look. But the chatter around him wasn’t sullen or dodgy. It was frantic and full of disbelief.

“He’s doing it!”

“Of course he’s doing it, he invented the gun, didn’t he?”

“I can’t believe he’s the first one to finish the tests.”

Dan finally pulled his head up, letting himself focus on the projection. Barry commanded the area of the chamber, controlling the Portal Gun with a true fluidity and talent. But Barry wasn’t in the familiar, white-walled room that made up an actual test chamber.

Rather, Barry bolted around a darker room, with cords splaying all along the ground. Only a few white, portal-friendly walls lay scattered around in particular places. And in the center of the room, frantically swiveling to keep up with Barry was the massive robotic body which BRIAN commanded, his red eye glowing with intensity. Dan felt his breath hitch with nerves.

The chatter in Dan’s immediate vicinity became more hushed, perhaps afraid of catching the attention of their boss. But a few things could still be picked up if Dan focused on them.

“Why would he shut down BRIAN? It’s out biggest success.”

“It’d be a waste for him to be shut down, wouldn’t it? We’d have to design another robot to oversee the tests.”

It seemed like victory was just around the corner and the whooping and hollering of encouragement only grew louder. Everyone was on the edge of their seats, hanging on to the possibility that a test subject might return from the chambers unharmed.

Barry fell to his knees, causing the crowd to fall incredibly silent and still. Barry’s hands gripped at the concrete floor as his body heaved for fresh air. Dan gripped at the railing of the balcony with a similar intensity.

A single voice seemed to carry over the whole crowd. “BRIAN released neurotoxin in the room.”

The muttering began again, this time more sullen, more familiar.

“He wasn’t fast enough.”

“Such a shame.”

“He was so close.”

Dan threw himself out of the room desperately, trying to ignore the sound of Barry’s hacking coughs as the neurotoxin killed him from the inside out. There wasn’t anyone left as far as Dan was concerned. Everyone was dead and it was all because of BRIAN.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this AU, there's more on my tumblr legendofgrump.tumblr.com


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